The Quest for Valhalla

Chapter 36

“One day till St. Blod. Christ, we’re never going to make it,” Eldard lamented, resting his forehead in his palm, his fingers poking through his unkempt, loose hair.

“We will, if we just keep on keeping on. I vote we don’t sleep until we have gotten this thing done,” Nina said. Her slender hands were hugging a mug of tea and she sounded courageous, but she looked like a cadaver pulled from a river. She popped three painkillers into her mouth and drank them down.

“Nina, have you noticed that your body is busy caving at an alarmig rate? You’re insane if you think you can do all this in your condition,” Gunnar said bluntly. “You have to get to a doctor and handle the consequences later.”

“Fuck that!”she protested, but her body ached as she rebuked his opinion, rendering him correct. “Gunnar, I did not want to bring this up and come out like an insensitive bitch, but…” she did hesitate, but it needed to be said, “…Val died for this. The least we can do is to spearhead and give it our all. If she had to die for this, what is so fucking special about me?”

Gunnar did not look at her, but his eye caught her tattoo again and in his memory he caught that familiar smell of Val’s hair. It hurt. He stood up, towering over Nina.

“Where is Sam?” he asked.

“Present,” Sam said from the doorway. He poured himself some good steaming tea and sat down at the table. “I won’t be long. Just need to warm up quickly.”

Nina looked weak and faint. Her hair was tied back, revealing the moist glisten of her skin.The corners of her mouth fell downward, flanking cracked lips. Sam could see the grip of death’s hand reaching for her. He brought the hot tea to his mouth while looking at her and scalded his lips, sending a shockwave of adrenaline through him. Dropping the cup, he saw the kitchen fading and another scene unraveled before his eyes.

A river meandered through a flat landscape of lush green, upon it, Viking merchant ships floating by the banks. The kitchen came back into view, with Gunnar and Eldard pulling him up. Then it fell away again, but he still heard their voices asking him what he saw. This was a sign that Sam was losing the ability to see, weaving in and out of reality instead of being wholly submerged for the duration. The river came back, and then, a settlement appeared as he walked on the uneven banks. It reminded him of a fishing village, and he described it to the others while he looked for clues. As the kitchen started melting into the borders of his sight, he desperately read a sign chiseled out on wood, fixed to a building. The vision vanished and reality enveloped him.

Sam’s lips quivered, his eyes blinking rapidly, “Staraya Ladoga.”

After looking up the name on Sam’s phone, Nina took steps to secure them her boyfriend’s private plane. She hated taking such liberty, but he had given her permission to use his staff should she ever have urgent need of them. This was urgent. Also, this was Russia.

When they reached the longhouse exhibition at Reykjavík 871±2, all four of them started looking for Sam’s dead horse.

“This is stupid. If he had a new vision, why do we still bother with this one?” Nina moaned with short gasps. Gunnar held her firmly against him and he could feel her entire body shivering.

“Every vision has its own message,” Eldard replied. “We have to find them all. Otherwise it’s like having four keys for six locks, you know? Dead horse, dead horse, dead horse…” he carried on walking through the old hall, surrounded by so many artifacts and old furniture that it would be exceedingly easy to find a horse. It would, after all, stand out amongst the other objects. But soon, he found that it did not stand at all. Under the west wall of the longhouse he discovered large skeletal bones. Like a naughty schoolboy, the massive biker froze, surveying his surroundings for witnesses before crouching to scrutinize the large vertebrae and skull. Then he recalled Sam saying that the beast was pawing the ground with his hoof, and after some rather awkward investigation, Eldard found his prize.

“No. Way,” he said under his breath with a smile.

Gunnar placed his hand on Nina’s cheek and remarked, “You are holding up remarkably well, Nina, but we have to do something about this. Darling, we think its arsenic, being slowly released into your bloodstream.”

“Then give me a sedative and remove the fucking thing!” Nina replied with fury and panic. Her sweat drenched hair glimmered over her head and a terrible tremor filled her motor skills.

“Come! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Eldard urged them, gesturing for Sam to hurry. The four rushed from the hall, but security thought nothing of it when he noticed that the lady was feeling unwell.

“What’s going on?” Sam hissed in a failed attempt not to look suspicious.

“Just get to the car,” Eldard spoke through his inanimate lips. Gunnar was almost lifting Nina off her feet to get her to the car.

“Did you find the dead horse?” Nina asked as they sped away.

Eldard first cast a long look at Nina, amusement playing in his eyes and then, trying to fight a smile, he revealed the entire hoof of the horse skeleton he procured.

“Wha-what?” Sam gawked, while Gunnar looked in the rear view mirror to see what his friend had done. Nina slammed her hand on her mouth and started to chuckle. Gunnar shook his head and cracked a wide smile at Eldard’s mischief.

“You stole an artifact?” Sam exclaimed with a look of hilarity behind his expression. “No, let me rephrase… you stole the dead horse’s fucking foot?”

“Well, as they say, you can bring a dead horse to Valhalla…” Eldard started, but the roar of laughter from his companions drowned him out.

It was the advent of the three days around St. Blod’s Day and they raced towards the air strip where Nina had elicited help from her old friend Gary, the pilot used by Dave Purdue on short notice missions.

“Nina!” the friendly man exclaimed when he saw them approaching the aircraft. “Lovely seeing you again!” His smile faded somewhat when he saw the state that she was in, immediately looking at Sam for some sign of explanation, but Sam just shook his head surreptitiously.

“Hey Gary,” she smiled kindly. As the others boarded she leaned into Gary outside the plane and asked sincerely, “You don’t perhaps have a spare pair of those?”

“Oh, Nina, you can have these,” he smiled and quickly ripped his Ray-Bans from his face and handed it to the self-conscious lady he felt worried about. “What happened to you?” He whispered cautiously, in case the men with her had something to do with her condition.

“Arsenic poisoning, Gary.”

The pilot gasped softly at the news, “How long have you been exposed?”

Nina remembered suddenly that Gary was a trained EMT, and that he would perhaps be able to help them get her the treatment she urgently needed. She explained to him the urgency of getting to the Volkhov River as soon as possible. Then, she made another call to good old Frida back in Edinburgh.

When they were sliding through the clouds, the group took the time for a much needed sleep break. Sam tried to stay awake to be with Nina as much as possible, to comfort her. She looked dreadful. She was a walking dead, but he still thought she was the most beautiful women on earth. Her body had become positively emaciated from hardly keeping any food down.

It was hell to see her like this and for the first time in a long time since his life dulled down, Sam felt the characteristic fumes of a desire for vengeance tingle deep in the pit of his stomach. He would trade places with her in a heartbeat, even if it were the last thing he did.

Lita was due a slow death anyway, and Sam knew he would not hesitate to slit her open if Nina had to succumb to the deadly poison Lita had gifted her. Watching the fragile historian use the time to read into the navigation on the Volkhov River without a thought for her own welfare, Sam’s respect for her only increased. Her strength of will was unbelievable and when he looked at her arm, the tattoo of the Tiwaz rune prevalent, he knew why Val Joutsen had chosen Nina Gould to be her champion. It was not for her historical knowledge at all, he knew now. The wise chieftain of The Brotherhood saw in Nina what no-one even knew was there. With his love for Nina warming him, Sam relinquished consciousness for the glory of a deep sleep without visions of nightmares. Regrettably, Nina’s nightmares had only begun.

Once they touched down in Pulkovo in St. Petersburg, the party traveled to Veliky Novgorod by road. The two hour drive was filled with suspense. This was it, the eve of St Blod. They were now locked in a world war under the flags of ancient chieftains no modern army could detect. They would leave this day only in victory or in death, each one of them. Gary was with them, to look after Nina while they completed their task. She was in a bad state. It was as if the impending clash accelerated her collapse. Perhaps it was the fact that she knew all the searching, fighting, fleeing, planning, unraveling, crying, aching, traveling would soon be over, regardless of who would win Valhalla.

Coincidentally or not, it seemed another vehicle was following them. It had been visible in the rear view mirror for over an hour, which was suspicious considering that these roads were not exactly highways with lots of traffic. It refused to pass, even when Gunnar signaled for it to. It would occasionally fall back a bit farther, only to sneak up on them again moments later.

Nina breathed hard and the men opened the windows for her to get fresh air, although it was very chilly. It didn’t matter to them as long as it made the fatally ill woman comfortable. Now and then, Nina dosed off, only to wake from severe pain in her abdomen, wailing in agony.

It drove Sam crazy to feel so helpless. Gary gave her Ringer’s solution IV and monitored her vitals. Gaunt and pallidly moist, her face contorted while her hands reached out to something invisible. She appeared to smile at first, but then a look of utter terror came on her and she started fighting it off. Gary and Eldard had to restrain her while her hallucinations grew more intense.

“No! I don’t want to, you fucking animal! Eat someone else’s hand!” she screamed, curling her hands at the wrist to protect them. When Eldard spoke to her, she looked confused.

“But you are dead, Professor. I cannot talk to you here. How is your head?” she asked Eldard.

“Answer her,” Gunnar said plainly.

“Umm, my head feels much better, thank you.”

“Oh, good,” she sighed, her drenched hair in disarray. “Because you have shrapnel all over your coat, old boy.”

“I swear to Christ, if she…” Sam quietly told Gunnar, but then he remembered that he was addressing someone who had, in fact, lost the love of his life recently.

Gunnar received a text on his cell phone.

“Just grab this and have a look, Sam,” he said, keeping his eye on the rear view mirror where two very disconcerting things chewed at him — Nina’s rapid decline and the strange car in their wake.

“It is from Lars,” Sam announced and Gunnar nodded for him to continue. “My wife got a text from an informant she trusts. It says, ‘L18R15. I’m sorry.’ From someone called Herman. Hope you know what that’s about,” Sam recited. Gunnar shook his head in negative.

“Keep it anyway. So much weird shit has been making sense lately, you never know,” the big widower replied. The car behind them disappeared without their noticing, while Nina took a turn for the worse. By the looks of it, she would not survive the night.